Readers of this blog know that I have been generally quite positive about the appointments the new Adminsitration is making for Middle East policy positions. Today’s news is quite different. According to Laura Rozen at the Foreign Policy blog, Chas W. Freeman, Jr., the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and may at times participate in daily intelligence briefings to President Obama. This is a profoundly disturbing appointment, if the report is correct. Freeman is a strident critic of Israel, and a textbook case of the old-line Arabism that afflicted American diplomacy at the time the state of Israel was born. His views of the region are what you would expect in the Saudi foreign ministry, with which he maintains an extremely close relationship, not the top CIA position for analytic products going to the President of the United States.

Here is a sample of his views on Israel, from his Remarks to the National Council on US-Arab Relations on September 12, 2005: “As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. …And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis. Mr. Sharon is far from a stupid man; he understands this. So, when he sets the complete absence of Palestinian violence as a precondition for implementing the road map or any other negotiating process, he is deliberately setting a precondition he knows can never be met.” Here is another example from 2008: “We have reflexively supported the efforts of a series of right-wing Israeli governments to undo the Oslo accords and to pacify the Palestinians rather than make peace with them. … The so-called “two-state solution” – is widely seen in the region as too late and too little. Too late, because so much land has been colonized by Israel that there is not enough left for a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel; too little, because what is on offer looks to Palestinians more like an Indian reservation than a country.”

I repeat: if there are serious financial conflicts of interest, Freeman should withdraw. I also find some of Freeman’s realist statements, even as contrarian, a little too brutal for my taste. But I also believe that someone whose views push the envelope against recent US policy in the Middle East is an important asset for the United States right now. And I find the hysterical bullying of this man to be repulsive.http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/freeman_is_about_views_not

ANOTHER MAN DOWN… Furthermore, researcher Ashley Rindsberg recently revealed Freeman’s pre- and post-9/11 “business connections” with the bin Laden family, which have donated “tens of thousands of dollars a year” to the MEPC. Rindsberg also discovered donations to Obama’s presidential campaign by Freeman’s Projects International, “a company that develops international business deals.”http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BE07A5C1-7D97-486A-89DD-52ACDC145319

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued the following statement today:

Senator Obama in Jordan today said that terrorism makes ‘Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what’s going on beyond their borders.’ What Senator Obama fails to recognize is that the safety and security of its citizenry is the primary obligation of a country’s leadership.

In essence, Senator Obama is asking Israelis and the American Jewish community to put terrorism in context. Senator Obama continues his rhetoric of moral equivalence by implying that measures taken by Israel to protect its citizens are on par with the Palestinians’ frustration at border checkpoints. Senator Obama’s attempt at even-handed diplomacy fails to hold Palestinians accountable for using terrorist tactics against innocent Israeli citizens as a means to achieve their ends.

Follow the Money: Obama contributor Talat M. Othman 23 Feb 2008 by to be announced Khalidi, a “virulent critic of Israel”, has “denounced Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state.” Pipes wrote that Othman is “president of the founding committee of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC). …

It’s not only unfair but it’s even dangerous to swallow their propaganda and “agree” with their: “we are the victims” culture.

It’s all routine to see each time the Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad “succeeding” in it’s devious tactics to appear as “victims”, be it by inflicting self misery on turning all aid and resources towards destructive hateful fascistic Jihad, or via using civilians as shields for terrorists, or any other cruel tricks they come up with to show the world how “bad” the Israelis are to them, because you know ‘all the troubles this self inflicted group of the Arab “Palestinians” always have is the “Zionists” fault of course.’

We should oppose any of their devilish propaganda that takes their civilians’ lives along with the ‘Oh, look how bad Israel is’, message, a “people” that is able to kill it’s own children (Hamas, Hezbollah and their massive followers) directly or indirectly only to damn (the good guy, anti terrorists defender) Israel’s image, never deserve any sympathy.

I know they prey, especially on Jews’ ultra conscience, but it’s a dangerous game, once we allow to have compassion on those that are about nothing but compassion and minimal values of humanity, we are replacing this love where it rather should go, to the real innocent people anywhere else outside the guilty “Palestinian” group, that are not pushing their leaders towards genocide ideology.

Once we allow our selves to cave in to their tactics and finally sing that “Palestinians are victims” dreadful song, the danger is enormous, if we take them as “victims”, this is exactly Islamic terrorists’ power all over the world, their slogan: ‘We are victims, so we can do what ever we want to”.

Well of course the Qassam attack on Israeli schoolchildren that caused the Israeli action was another well planned trick to “justify” the latest Islamic bombing on innocent Israelis.

It’s your life and mine or theirs, as simple as that, in the fascism of anti non-Muslims, or anti all that are not the right kind of Muslim in their evil eyes.

Kudos to [Jan. 2008] Obama, [though being such a liberal] who understood that, in writing to the [international Arab oil lobby hijacked] UN that he understands Israel’s being forced by Palestinian terrorists to close cigarettes and luxury items (starving? yea right! another Pallywood lie) channels to Gaza.

The letter from the Senator to the Ambassador speaks for itself:Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,

I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.

I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condenm the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel…

All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.

The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks… If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.